III. Arbitrary
Detention, Torture, and Enforced Disappearances

As in much of the rest of Syria, security forces in Homs Governorate
subjected thousands of people to arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances,
and systematic torture in detention.

Witnesses from Homs city, Tal Kalakh, and Rastan described
to Human Rights Watch large-scale operations during which security forces
detained dozens of people at a time, targeted activists and their family
members for arrest, picked up people at checkpoints and by street patrols.

Exact numbers are impossible to verify, but information
collected by Human Rights Watch suggests that the security forces detained more
than 1,000 individuals from Tal Kalakh alone. Activists interviewed by Human
Rights Watch said that thousands of people were detained from April to August
in Homs city. While most were released after several days or weeks in
detention, at this writing several hundred remain missing, apparently subjected
to enforced disappearances, their fate and whereabouts unknown to the families.[92]

All the former detainees from Homs Governorate interviewed
by Human Rights Watch reported seeing hundreds of others while in detention,
saying that the detention facilitates were unbearably overcrowded with guards
packing dozens of detainees into cells intended for a few and holding detainees
in the corridors outside of the cells. For example, one witness told Human
Rights Watch that in the State Security detention facility in Homs, just in the
immediate vicinity of his small cell that held eight detainees, there were 14
other small cells, each holding approximately the same number of persons, and
one large cell with many more inside. In addition, he said, he could see other
detainees in the corridor between the cells.[93]

Most detainees were young men in their 20s or 30s, but
security forces also detained children and elderly people. Several witnesses
reported the detention of their parents or grandparents – individuals in
their 60s and 70s. Human Rights Watch documented the detention and beating of
two 13-year-old boys in Tal Kalakh; other released detainees also reported
seeing many teenagers in detention.

Witnesses from Homs city
and neighboring towns described to Human Rights Watch sweep operations that
security forces conducted in their neighborhoods following the protests. They
said that joint groups of military personnel, mukhabarat, and shabeeha
militias moved through the neighborhoods grabbing people in the streets and
breaking into houses. At times, they had lists of individuals they were looking
for, and on several occasions, when the people they wanted were not at their
homes, they detained their relatives. On other occasions, they randomly
detained people from the street or from their homes.

Witnesses from Tal Kalakh told Human Rights Watch that following
massive protests there on May 14-15, security forces moved into the town and
arrested hundreds of people in different neighborhoods. A majority of witnesses
from Tal Kalakh had been either arrested themselves, or had family members or
neighbors who were detained.

One of the witnesses, Ali (not his real name), said that
following the protests in Tal Kalakh on May 14-15,he spent several days in
hiding, moving from house to house. He said:

I was hiding in water ditches, and saw security forces
arresting people from every house on the street. The detainees were too many to
count. Security forces pushed them to the ground and walked on them. Sometimes,
they made them chant praises to Bashar al-Assad before putting plastic
handcuffs on them and leading them away.[94]

Another witness, Mahmud (not his real name), said that he
fled from the house when the security forces came to his neighborhood on May
15, but they took away his 51-year-old father. He said:

I was hiding in a house across the street and saw that they
broke into our house and dragged my father out. They pushed him on the ground
and started beating him, demanding that he praise Bashar al-Assad. He had to do
it. They were about 10-15 men, some in military uniforms, with special forces
badges, and some in black uniforms and white sneakers; I believe these were
from mukhabarat. They blindfolded him and took him away in a taxi. For
24 days we had no information about his whereabouts, and then my uncle found
him in the central jail in Homs, and managed to get him released on bail. When
he was released his front teeth were broken and his face and eyes were swollen.[95]

A witness told Human Rights Watch that on June 24 he saw
plainclothes security personnel emerge from a taxi with the license plate
number 747191 to detain a young man walking in front of Abdulhamed al-Zehrawy High
School in the Homs neighborhood of Insha’at. Seven police officers on
motorcycles joined them in beating the man, then put him a security bus, the
witness said.[96]

Three protesters described to Human Rights Watch events in
the Mal`ab neighborhood on July 8, when about 200 security forces dispersed a
protest of about 1,000 people and detained 10 protesters. The three witnesses
said that five protesters tried to escape and hid in a nearby house, but were
spotted by security men, who came after them, broke the door of the house, and
arrested all five, along with the doorman, who was not involved.[97]

A resident of Khalidiyya, Abu Ahmad (not his real name),
told Human Rights Watch that around a hundred people from his street were
detained during June and July and that the whereabouts of many remain unknown.
He described a security raid that he witnessed in his neighborhood on July 26:

Around 4 p.m. yesterday, more than a dozen pick-up trucks
and two army buses entered the al-Sharakes street in the Khalidiyya neighborhood.
They just arrested everybody they saw in the street right outside my shop. They
stayed there for several hours. By the time they left they had arrested more
than 40 people. I have no idea where they took them.[98]

In Homs and neighboring towns security forces also conducted
targeted arrests of wanted activists, people suspected of collecting and
disseminating information about the protests, and doctors and nurses who
assisted wounded protesters.

On May 12, 2011, Muhammad Najati Tayyara, a human rights
activist from Homs who had spoken with the international media about the
government’s crackdown, was detained on a street in Homs, a friend of his
told Human Rights Watch. According to Tayyara’s lawyer, he has been held
in a basement storage room in Homs’ central prison, along with others
arrested during protests. Tayyara has been able to see his family and lawyer
once a week for 15 and 30 minutes, respectively. His lawyer said that a court
in Damascus is examining possible charges of “spreading false or
exaggerated information that weakens national sentiment while Syria is at war
or is expecting a war” or “spreading lies harmful to the prestige
of the nation.”[99]

In Homs city, security agents arrested two doctors, Eyad Rifa`i,
an orthopedic surgeon, and Jalal Hasoun al-Najar, a neurologist, on July 7 and
July 9 respectively. Authorities accused both men of providing medical
assistance to wounded protesters and information to international reporters
about the crackdown, friends told Human Rights Watch. Rifa`i drove himself to
the Air Force branch of security after receiving an order by phone to come in,
said a friend. Agents from the military security branch arrested al-Najar at
his clinic in Homs, and the next day went to his house and took his laptop and mobile
phone.[100]
Activists told Human Rights Watch that on July 13, both a city official and the
medical association in Homs petitioned the military security branch for al-Najjar’s
release, saying that treating the wounded is not a crime. According to one
activist, security authorities replied to the city official that al-Najjar had
been arrested not for his medical activities, but for alleged political
activities.Both men were released on August 19.[101]

In addition to sweeps and targeted arrests during and
following protests, security forces also detained people at checkpoints and
during patrols. In one case documented by Human Rights Watch, on May 18, 2011,
two 13-year-old children were detained in Tal Kalakh on their way to school.
One of them told Human Rights Watch:

We were passing near Abu Arab square, and there was a big
checkpoint there, with several tanks and concrete slabs. The military stopped
us and asked where we were going. We said we were going to our school, but when
they heard it was a religious school, they got very angry, and started yelling,
calling us “pigs who want freedom.” We tried to explain that we had
nothing to do with the protests, but they beat us, and then blindfolded us and
put us in car. They took us to some room with a horrible smell where we spent
the next two hours. Every now and then somebody came and beat us with fists and
wooden clubs. Then they released us – just dropped us on the side of the
street, saying somebody would pick us up and bring back to town.[102]

Torture
in detention

The pattern of systematic and rampant torture in detention
that Human Rights Watch documented in Daraa and other parts of the country has
repeated itself in Homs Governorate as well. Almost all of the 25 former
detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported being subjected to various
forms of torture while in detention, and witnessing the abuse of fellow
detainees.

According to former
detainees, the majority of those detained in Homs city and nearby towns were
held in the Homs Military Intelligence base, Balooni military prison – often
used as a holding facility for detainees to be transferred to other cities or to
other intelligence agencies – and branches of Political Security, State
Security, and Air Force Security.

Detainees provided consistent accounts of appalling
conditions in detention, including overcrowded cells with no ventilation, lack
of food and water, and limitations on the use of toilet.

One witness, Abu Adam, who was detained in early July along
with 11 other protesters from the Khalidiyya neighborhood in Homs, described to
Human Rights Watch the conditions in a State Security detention facility in
Homs:

The conditions were horrible. The cell measured 1.7 by 2
meters. There were eight of us there. There was a tiny window high up on the
wall, but it provided no light or air. We had to take turns sleeping on each
other’s shoulders. There was no place to lie down. I was dripping with
sweat from head to toe. They gave us two loafs to share twice a day and a
bottle of water. Twice a day they gave us 10 seconds to use the toilet.[103]

Another former detainee, Omar (not his real name), who was
held first at the Balooni Prison in Homs and then at the Military Intelligence
base in Homs along with his father and five brothers, told Human Rights Watch:

On the 23rdday of detention, they moved us to
the Military Intelligence base where they squeezed 50 of us into a tiny room.
We could only stand; we were pushed so close together that it was hard to
breathe. We stayed there for 10 hours. My 73-year-old father almost died
– they took him out after 40 minutes.[104]

Another former detainee held by Military Security in their
detention facility in Homs, told Human Rights Watch that security forces placed
him with two other detainees in a small cell measuring 0.90 by 2 meters, and
that they had to take turns sleeping. He told Human Rights Watch that there
were 20 individual cells similar to his, all occupied by three individuals.[105]

Interrogators and guards routinely subjected detainees to
beatings with batons and cables during arrest, transportation, and during
interrogations. Witnesses also reported other forms of torture, including
burning of different parts of bodies with heated metal rods, use of electric
shocks, drilling or cutting holes in bodies, use of various stress positions
for hours or even days, and the use of improvised devices, such as car tires,
to immobilize the bodies of detainees and ease their beating on sensitive areas
like the soles of their feet, their head, and backs. Witnesses provided Human
Rights Watch with video and photo materials that show marks left by these forms
of torture on the bodies of the released detainees as well as the bodies of
detainees who had died in detention (see below).

One witness, Wael (not his real name), described the torture
he and other detainees experienced at the Military Intelligence base in Homs:

They brought me into what felt like a big room with lots of
people inside. I was blindfolded but could hear people around me screaming and
begging for water. I could hear the sound of electric tasers and interrogators
ordering to hang people by their hands. Once they got to me, they started
mocking me, saying, “We welcome you, leader of the revolution,” and
asked me what was going on in Tal Kalakh. I said I didn’t know, and then
the torture began.

They beat with cables and then hanged me by my hands from a
pipe under the ceiling so that my feet weren’t touching the floor. I was
hanging there for about six hours, although it was hard to tell the time. They
were beating me, and pouring water on me, and then using electric tasers.

For the night, they put me into a cell, about three-by-three
meters, along with some 25 other detainees. We were all squeezed together. Next
morning, they brought me in for another interrogation. This time, they “folded”
me, pushed my legs and head into a tire, flipped me on my back, and started
flogging the soles of my feet.[106]

Another witness, Basel (not his real name), gave similar
accounts of torture he experienced at the Military Intelligence detention
facility in Homs:

When I did not answer all their questions during
interrogation, they took me to a torture room. My eyes were blindfolded, but I
recall going five steps down. They used handcuffs to tie one of my arms to a
pipe under the ceiling and left me hanging there, with my feet barely touching
the ground. They left me there for two or three hours. They did this over eight
days. There were usually five or six detainees tortured that way at any given
moment. I could not see them but I could hear their screams. Sometimes, they
would also beat me while hanging. My wrist, arm, and shoulder would hurt so
much, that I tried at one point to break my arm so that they would have to take
me down.[107]

Basel said that after three days of torture, he could no
longer bend his legs and his feet were worryingly swollen. The security forces
called for a doctor to give him an anti-inflammatory injection. Basel said that
he met two detainees who had had nails pulled out and many who had been
electrocuted with electric batons.

Another witness, Omar (not his real name), told Human Rights
Watch that some detainees were subjected to particularly brutal treatment:

Four days after we were brought to the Military
Intelligence base in Homs, the guards took one the detainees, Abdul Halim [name
changed] for interrogation. When they returned him to the cell two hours later,
he was half-dead. No matter where you touched his body, he screamed in pain. He
had black-and-red marks from electric shocks on his hands, legs, and back. They
pulled out nails on his hands. The interrogators also used an electric drill on
him – hehad holes from the drill on his hands, hips, knees, and feet. He
was bleeding profusely. We asked the guard to give him medical assistance, but
they refused.

I was moved to another facility shortly thereafter, and I
don’t know whether he survived.[108]

Interrogators did not spare those detainees who were wounded
during the arrest and thus particularly vulnerable. One former detainee, Wassim
(not his real name), sustained a bayonet wound on his back during arrest. He
said that he and other wounded detainees had been subjected to various forms of
torture in the military hospital in Homs:

After the nurses stitched my wound without applying any
anesthesia, the guards took me into a detention facility in the hospital, threw
me on the ground, and started beating me. I told them I was injured and cried,
asking them not to beat me, but they didn’t stop. They put me on a bed,
and when they removed my blindfold, I saw five other detainees, all with
gunshot wounds, on the beds around me.

Two hours later one of the guards came in, and beat me
again. Then I saw him heating up a metal rod on a gas heater. I was terrified
that he would use it on me, but instead he walked up to another man – hewas
naked, and his hands were cuffed. The guard put the red-hot metal rod to his
testicles. The man screamed, saying he was innocent. The guard then beat him
with the same rod, and then heated it up again, this time burning his feet.[109]

Detainees arrested in Tal Kalakh said that before delivering
them to the detention facility, security forces brought them to a nearby
Alawite village where they encouraged residents to beat and humiliate the
detainees. Wael told Human Rights Watch:

I was in a bus with about 50 other detainees. The security
forces drove into an Alawite village not far from Tal Kalakh. People in the
village were ready – there were about 150 of them, waiting for us. Shabeeha,
who were guarding us on the bus, told them, “Come and beat these
traitors, and if any of these pigs dies, just throw them away.” The
villagers then started beating us with their fists and feet, and shovel
handles, saying, “You want freedom – here is your freedom!”[110]

Another detainee from Tal Kalakh,
Omar, described similar experience to Human Rights Watch, saying that when the
guards brought them to an Alawite village, the residents first tried to topple
the bus with the detainees, and then, when the guard opened the back door,
started throwing rocks into the bus, spitting and swearing at the detainees.[111]

The procedure for releasing the detainees appeared to be
just as arbitrary as the detention process. All of the former detainees
interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that at various points during their
detention the interrogators pushed their thumbs onto some papers to get
fingerprints. The detainees were blindfolded at the time and could not see what
the papers were. Most of the former detainees said they were never brought
before a judge. Some reported being released after their relatives paid bribes
to the heads of the detention facility. Others said that after weeks in
detention they were brought into a courthouse but, instead of being brought
before a judge, were simply let go.

Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported
widespread detentions in Homs by security forces. Just like in other parts of
Syria, most were arrested during protests or in their homes and spent from
several days to several weeks in mukhabarat detention facilities. A
lawyer who has worked on many detention cases told Human Rights Watch that he
has not seen a single released detainee without torture marks.[112]

Abu Adam told Human Rights Watch said that in early July he
participated in protests near the Omari Mosque when security forces opened fire
at the protesters. He ran but was captured, together with 11 other protesters.
He said that he was taken to the State Security facility nearby:

Three members of the security forces took me to a room and
started beating me. They beat me with their fists, batons, and cables. The
beating lasted for three or four hours. I don’t know exactly. I was very
disoriented. There was not a single part of my body that was not beaten. An
interrogator came and started asking me where I was from, what the protesters
had been saying, what type of weapons we had and where we got them from –
even though we had no weapons at all. I was lucky that I did not have any video
or photos of the protests on my phone. Those who did were beaten much worse. I
feared for my life so I eventually started agreeing to everything they said. I
would have confessed to owning a tank if they had asked me.[113]

According to Abu Adam, there were fourteen small cells in
the immediate vicinity of his cell, each packed with about eight detainees, and
one big cell, which held many more.[114]

Abu Adam said that he was released after six days in
detention only because his family paid a $3,000 bribe to the head of the
detention facility.[115]